As gun-rights groups galvanize around a new Pennsylvania law making it easier to challenge local gun laws, Bethlehem City Council this week began the process of removing an old gun permit fee from its books.

The $2 fee isn't consistent with state law that prohibits cities from regulating firearms, city officials said.

"Cities are unable to legislate the idea of carrying the firearm," solicitor William Leeson told City Council on Tuesday.

The fee, which City Council voted to repeal on first reading Tuesday, is just a small piece of a larger debate on gun rights going on across Pennsylvania.

Municipalities face possible challenges for ordinances ranging from firearm bans in parks to requirements that gun owners report lost or stolen firearms.

While the law banning municipalities from regulating firearms has been in effect for decades, a recent law allows more people to challenge it.

Those who challenge do not have to prove they were harmed by the law to prove standing to sue. The law also gives "membership organizations," such as the National Rifle Association, legal standing to sue municipalities over their stricter laws and collect legal fees and other costs if successful in court.

Lancaster, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have challenged the new law, saying it was improperly passed.

"We can await the results," Leeson told Bethlehem council. "Depending on the results, the city can re-enact this maybe somewhere down the line."

Meanwhile, municipalities have been cleaning up their gun laws. Allentown is repealing a requirement that people notify the city of lost or stolen guns within 24 hours.

Bethlehem's registration requirement does not include a provision to report lost or stolen guns. It only lists a firearm fee alongside other license and permit fees ranging from peddling to operating buses. Assistant solicitor Matthew Kloiber said the city hasn't collected the firearm fee for some time.

Council President J. William Reynolds said it is unfortunate the city has to repeal its law. He said cities should be able to weigh in on the issue if the state and federal governments aren't willing to do what "most Americans believe are common-sense regulations."

But, Reynolds said, "It's the right move to keep the city out of litigation."

Council is scheduled to take its final vote in two weeks to repeal the fee.

Tom Campione, a member of the Pennsylvanians for Self Protection, applauded council for deleting the provision ordinance.

He said the city should not be able to erode protections of the long-held American right to possess firearms and requested council review parts of the city parks ordinance that is not consistent with the state's gun law.

Kloiber said the city's parks ordinance, which was overhauled last year, complies with state law. Kloiber said the solicitor's office also is in the process of consolidating the city's ordinances involving the discharge of a firearm.

Joshua Prince, an attorney for Campione's and other gun rights groups, sent a letter to the Bethlehem city clerk's office in December, notifying city officials of his work in litigating gun-rights violations and the new law that makes it easier to sue municipalities over gun laws.

In the letter, Prince said a patchwork of local gun laws serves "no purpose but to ensnare those who have no intention of violating the law but who unwarily find themselves in a jurisdiction which imposes restrictions" on rights that the state otherwise allows.